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Looks like I'm late to this party and I just skimmed the thread, but I'll try to interject some points that I don't think anyone else covered.

Re: graphics cards...this is tricky. There's nothing preventing you from running PhysX on an AMD card. However, PhysX is owned by Nvidia and they put little checks in their PhysX drivers that only allow GPU-acceleration on Nvidia GPUs. This yields better performance & in a lot of cases enhanced PhysX effects in your games. Another consideration outside of games is Cuda. That's an Nvidia exclusive as well & if you have any software that takes advantage of Cuda acceleration you might do well to consider Big Green.

However, things aren't so bad on AMD's side of the table. Per dollar spent you usually get more horsepower for your money with AMD & their cards are definitely more power-efficient than Nvidia's. AMD's cards handle a few esoteric video formats/codecs better than Nvidia as well.

If going with an Intel platform new chipsets are coming out touting the new PCIe v3.0 standard which are promising optimized data pathways for greater throughput. You can find this new standard in the new H77, Z77, and X79 chipsets. While PCIe v3.0 won't future-proof your new PC it might in the long run help you get a greater life-span out of it.

Now as for monitors, go big or go home. Try to find something with the ever-increasing more rare 16:10 aspect ratio. You won't notice much difference if watching movies at your desk, but you'll really value the extra screen space when you switch gears to productivity software.

A 28" monitor sounds really nice.. BUT if it were me, personal preference, I'd rather have two 21" monitors.

Hey, mouser. Yeah, I use multiple monitors (4, in fact) at work and it's really neat. I don't think I'd really like to play games on multiple monitors, though, due to the slight separation between them.

By the way, do you think you'll be able to get donations through Amazon shortly? If not, I'll just mail you a check.

By the way, do you think you'll be able to get donations through Amazon shortly? If not, I'll just mail you a check.

We supported amazon for the longest time, then suddenly they sent me an email saying they have blocked our account because 1) they don't support "membership" clubs, and 2) because we offer lifetime guarantee. Been impossible to get help from them after that. I am still hoping that I can put up an alternative page that would allow people to "pay" through amazon as long as they are willing to think of it in their mind as a purchase without a lifetime guarantee

I have three monitors and have found very few games that don't play well. For the couple of games that don't play well pressing Win + P and choosing just one monitor to play on invariably fixes the problem.

Yes that is the one. By the way one minor frustration of that case is that it doesn't come with an external 3.5" bay. You can buy a caddy from Antec if you need one, or if you don't mind losing the look of the front facia too much you can buy cheap 5.25" to 3.5" converters.

Other than that it is a great case with plenty of room for ventilation and good fans built in. It also has loads of space for adding internal hard disks (mine has 4 at the moment but I think it takes up to 6 not including the visible 5.25" slots).

I have three monitors and have found very few games that don't play well. For the couple of games that don't play well pressing Win + P and choosing just one monitor to play on invariably fixes the problem.

Glad to hear that gaming has finally caught up with multiple monitors. Now if the game developers would let us hook up enough for a 360 degree view.

For the money, the Intel Core i7-2700K @ 3.50GHz is a very good performer.

I just built a system using AMD FX-8120 Eight-Core on an ASUS M5A786-M/USB3 motherboard with 2 x 4GB DDR3 SDRAM. With the included software, it can be easily overclocked. It is not as good as the Intel I mentioned above, but I shall be passing it on in about 6 months.

Word of warning about the case - Don't get a really cheap one as everything will be more difficult to fit. Especially look for the front connectors that you will want to have.

For the money, the Intel Core i7-2700K @ 3.50GHz is a very good performer.

I just built a system using AMD FX-8120 Eight-Core on an ASUS M5A786-M/USB3 motherboard with 2 x 4GB DDR3 SDRAM. With the included software, it can be easily overclocked. It is not as good as the Intel I mentioned above, but I shall be passing it on in about 6 months.

Word of warning about the case - Don't get a really cheap one as everything will be more difficult to fit. Especially look for the front connectors that you will want to have.

If my budget allowed it, I'd go with an i7. And, WOW! $1650 for some of those processors?

I'd spring the extra $35 and get the i5-2500K - these things are probably the best 'bang for buck' CPU around, you can go up to 4.3GHz by just changing the multiplier, all on the stock HSF.

I'm no expert, but when buying myself (autumn last year) I read a few times that this one was best value/"bang for buck". The extra $80 (comparing with Carols link above) will get you more, but not really a whole lot more by the sounds of it. So unless you really plan to use that extra, or if you just have the dosh...

Strange pricing - maybe it says more about the Bulldozer processor than anything else! I think it is probably worth waiting a CPU generation or two until they get it right.

Even though we have been talking about Intel chips in this thread I still prefer AMD in terms of bang for buck - they are just so my cheaper than Intel offerings - and I have found my Phenom II x6 very good - certainly spending two to three times the price on an i5 or i7 is hard to justify.

The other thing I like is that the Catalyst Drivers for AMD chipsets and AMD graphics card are all part of the same package which makes regular updates easier and it means the drivers are designed to work well together. All drivers have issues but I certainly found nVidia drivers caused more headaches especially if it wasn't an nVidia chipset on the mobo.